almost instantaneous influence on her as well, and of one part of this
influence she was aware: it had made her, beginning on the very first
evening, want to think, and acted on her curiously like a conscience.
What this conscience seemed to press upon her notice with an insistence
that startled her--Lady Caroline hesitated to accept the word, but it
would keep on coming into her head--was that she was tawdry.

She must think that out.

The morning after the first dinner together, she woke up in a
condition of regret that she should have been so talkative to Mrs.
Wilkins the night before. What had made her be, she wondered. Now, of
course, Mrs. Wilkins would want to grab, she would want to be
inseparable; and the thought of a grabbing and an inseparableness that
should last four weeks made Scrap's spirit swoon within her. No doubt
the encouraged Mrs. Wilkins would be lurking in the top garden waiting
to waylay her when she went out, and would hail her with morning
cheerfulness. How much she hated being hailed with morning
cheerfulness--or indeed, hailed at all. She oughtn't to have
encouraged Mrs. Wilkins the night before. Fatal to encourage. It was
bad enough not to encourage, for just sitting there and saying nothing
seemed usually to involve her, but actively to encourage was suicidal.
What on earth had made her? Now she would have to waste all the
precious time, the precious, lovely time for thinking in, for getting
square with herself, in shaking Mrs. Wilkins off.

With great caution and on the tips of her toes, balancing herself
carefully lest the pebbles should scrunch, she stole out when she was
dressed to her corner; but the garden was empty. No shaking off was
necessary. Neither Mrs. Wilkins nor anybody else was to be seen. She
had it entirely to herself. Except for Domenico, who presently came
and hovered, watering his plants, again especially all the plants that
were nearest her, no one came out at all; and when, after a long while
of following up thoughts which seemed to escape her just as she had got
them, and dropping off exhausted to sleep in the intervals of this
chase, she felt hungry and looked at her watch and saw that it was past
three, she realized that nobody had even bothered to call her in to
lunch. So that, Scrap could not but remark, if any one was shaken off
it was she herself.

Well, but how delightful, and how very new. Now she would really
be able to think, uninterrupte